TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

It was an early Sunday morning in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Seventeen-year-old William "Bill" Harrer could hear a low droning sound in the distance, not unlike a hive of bees going about their work.

"I was just going on guard duty," the Bakersfield man remembered.

Almost too young to wear the uniform of a U.S. Marine, the teenager had needed his mother's signature before he could enlist in the summer of 1941, right out of high school in his hometown of Evanston, Ill.

"I saw a poster that said 'Join the Marines and see the world,'" he said. "That sounded pretty good."

Five months later, as he walked toward what he thought would be routine guard duty at the Pearl Harbor naval yard, Harrer's morning was about to change -- and the whole world would change with it.

"The bombs started exploding," he remembered 70 years and a lifetime later. "It all went bad from there."

As Pfc. Harrer turned back to join his unit, he came inches from becoming one of the more than 2,400 Americans killed in the attack.

"I heard something whistle by my ear," Harrer remembers.

A chunk of shrapnel had just missed him and was embedded in the road beneath his feet. Harrer couldn't resist. He took a moment to dig the hunk of lead out of the ground, slipped it into his pocket and rushed back to his barracks, where he was met with complete bedlam.

Exactly seven decades after the "date which will live in infamy," he still has that piece of shrapnel as a reminder.

MIST OF MEMORIES

Before the attack, international tensions between the United States and Japan had been running high, so when Harrer saw the rising sun insignia on the sides of the fighters and torpedo planes flying overhead, he realized the Asian nation had launched a strike on America's Pacific fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor, along with hundreds of military aircraft at nearby airfields -- including Hickam Field, which was right next to Harrer's Marine barracks.

Soon, the sky was black with smoke. The attack could easily have been the precursor to a ground invasion, but no one knew for sure. The young Marine was operating on pure adrenaline.

But Harrer acknowledges that his memories of that long-ago day are jumbled, uneven, and muted by the mist of time.

He turns 88 on Christmas Eve. And he knows full-well he's one of a dwindling number of Pearl Harbor survivors, virtually all of them in their late-80s and 90s. But he doesn't dwell on that reality.

"I'm just lucky, I guess," he said.

Marc Sandall, an organizer of local Pearl Harbor Day events designed to commemorate the day and honor those who served, says it continues to be important for Americans to mark this day, to remember Pearl Harbor.

"It serves as a reminder that there are heroes amongst us," said Sandall, who lost a distant cousin, Merrill Keith Sandall, when the USS Arizona was sunk in the harbor that day. Sandall's late father, Walter D. "Sandy" Sandall, was also a veteran of that global conflict.

"Our country sacrificed so much," Sandall said. "If we don't take time to remember, we won't know where we came from."

Like a lot of World War II veterans, it wasn't until Harrer reached an advanced age that these and other stories began trickling out.

His own children said they heard very little of his World War II experiences early on. But in the mid-1990s, the entire family visited Pearl Harbor, as Harrer pointed out places he stood and recalled the things he witnessed.

"I bought him the movie 'Pearl Harbor' for Christmas one year," said his daughter, Cate Praggastis. "We noticed several months later that he never even unwrapped it from the plastic.

"I said, 'Dad, how come you never watched the movie?' His response was, 'Don't need to, I was there.'

"I don't think he ever did watch it," she said.

SURVIVAL AND FAMILY

Harrer can't forget the overwhelming feeling he had that the U.S. military was completely unprepared for the enemy's precision military strike.

"We were not good boy scouts that day," he said.

The Marines in Company A had to break the padlock on a weapons storehouse to get their hands on their bolt-action, single-shot rifles and a few machine guns. As the helper of a machine gunner, Harrer found himself having to load bullets, one at a time, into the ammo belts.

Eventually they started shooting at the Japanese Zeros. Harrer saw one go down.

At one point, a Japanese pilot flew his fighter so low -- about roof-height -- that the young, green Marine could see the man in the cockpit.

"He was so close I could see a big smile on his face," Harrer recalled. "He was after bigger fish .. and it's a good thing. He could have killed a whole bunch of us."

Harrer would remain stationed in Hawaii for some time. He would serve on Guam and Iwo Jima, but he would never experience direct combat again.

He was in a replacement unit he believes would have been the "tip of the spear" during the planned invasion of Japan, but when President Truman authorized the use of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally.

"I believe his decision saved my life," Harrer said. "Truman is my hero."

After the war, Harrer met the woman with whom he would build a life and a family. William and Amelia Harrer married on May 24, 1947. They would remain together for 55 years, until Amelia's death in 2002.

"He and my mom were committed partners," Praggastis said. "They loved their kids."

"After my mom's sudden death, my dad was shaken to his core," she recalled. "He really was lost, but he cared so much for us and for my mom's memory that he refused to become a victim of the loss."

Now Harrer plays tennis three times a week with a group of seniors. They have been playing for years at a local park, said his daughter. He takes dance lessons and stays active in other ways.

After all, he has five grown children, 10 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

Maybe that's what he was fighting for all along.